BOSTON: Scientists have created a “Nightmare Machine” — an artificial intelligence system that can understand what makes certain images frightening, and tranform harmless-looking images into stuff of nightmares.The primary reason for building Nightmare Machine was to explore the common fear inspired by intelligent computers, said researchers including Pinar Yanardag from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab.They wanted to confront the anxiety inspired by AI, and simultaneously test if a computer is capable of understanding and visualizing what makes people afraid.The designers used “deep learning” – a system that mimics the neural connections in a human brain – to teach a computer what makes for a frightening visual, according to Manuel Cebrian, a principal research scientist at CSIRO in Australia.”Deep-learning algorithms perform remarkably well in several tasks considered difficult or…